This has got to be one of the saddest security studies I’ve ever seen -- research into people computing/online habits in bed.

Endpoint security vendor Credent Technologies commissioned a survey of 300 Londoners to find out how much time they’re spending on their wireless computers and devices while in bed and, consequently, the security implications.

Surprisingly, 57 percent of survey participants say they spend 2 to 6 hours per week checking e-mail, surfing the Web and doing work while lying in bed. Nearly one in 10 say they spend more time on their mobile devices in the evenings than talking with their significant others.

“This survey confirms that there is a growing population that is no longer restricted by working hours or confined to the office building itself. People are mobile and will work anywhere -- even in bed,” Michael Callahan, vice president at Credant Technologies, said in a statement. “Therefore, when sensitive and valuable data is being held on these devices and they get lost, it can have pretty detrimental and far-reaching consequences to both the worker and their employer.”

Those more worrisome consequences are actual data risks that have nothing to do with where the user takes a mobile device. According to the Credent survey, 44 percent say they hold important company data on mobile devices. Another 54 percent say they do not use encryption or other security protections to guard sensitive business data.

But this is pseudo research designed to capture press attention (oops, it worked) by producing some titillating data that really has no correlation. Check this stat: 87 percent of the survey participants say they connect to the Internet via a wireless network or router while lying in bed, and 56 percent use their home wireless access to pass corporate data over the Internet. The truth is that uploading and downloading corporate data on a loosely or unsecure home wireless network is a risk regardless of whether the person is sitting on the coach or sprawled out in bed.

Surveys such as this often do more harm than good, since they trivialize security risks and threats and, as this survey does, often ends with sophomoric, standard recommendations (like, always use passwords). File under I&I (irrelevant and ignorable).